


Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 3

by raedbard



Series: Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening [3]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-22
Updated: 2006-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there are (at least) two very special madmen, provenance for pink rubber balls, big speeches and days of jubilee, and yet more Jack is drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 3

**Author's Note:**

> This part goes from 'The Short List' to 'Six Meetings Before Lunch', with specific references to 'He Shall From Time to Time' and 'Celestial Navigation'.

1.

Toby's office is more covered in paper than Sam has ever seen it. The spectacle would bother him less but for the fact that his own office looks exactly the same, and possibly worse since, per square foot, his own office is less spacious than Toby's, even without twenty cartons of paper eating up the floor. He is sitting on Toby's couch next to a stack of boxes, which, if he moves significantly in any direction, dig painfully into his hip. Toby sits behind his desk, with six pink rubber balls still safe in their wooden box and not, as yet, posing any danger to the integrity of the window or Sam's head, to his left and his reference Bible, dictionary and speeches of Lincoln on the right. Sam finds himself wondering, as he covers his fifth yawn with the back of his hand, if the placement is deliberate. But they've been sitting here almost an hour, and have accomplished next to nothing.

"Okay," Toby says, standing and spreading his arms wide over his desk. "We have two piles of paper. Pile right," he says, as he waves his hand over one stack, "Is everybody's favourite crazy lunatic, Judge Roberto Mendoza, whom we must, somehow, appoint to the US Supreme Court." Toby grins, and his eyes are black with sarcasm as he picks up the uppermost briefing book and shakes it at Sam, who flinches slightly from the spectacle. "And, pile left," he chuckles as he looks down at it, "Oh, pile left is our very own, very special crazy lunatic, President Josiah Bartlet, and what he's going to say January 11th at the State of the Union. Unless we cancel, due to my long-overdue death from extreme fatigue."

"Toss a coin?" Sam says, yawning again.

"It's getting that way." Toby pulls his cuff aside to look at his watch and groans when he read the time as ten after nine. He looks up at Sam, "How long have we been sitting here?"

"Maybe an hour?"

"And you didn't want to maybe, I don't know, mention that?"

"Well, we were having so much fun, Toby."

"Yes, yes indeed."

Sam takes in a deep breath and sits up straight on the couch, whereupon the box of paper which tops the stack sitting beside him creaks a little and over-balances, slipping from the stack and hitting Sam in the shoulder as it falls.

"Ow."

"I would think so," Toby says, his face unsympathetic. "When you're done getting crushed to death over there ... you know, in your own time."

"Your concern for my wellbeing floors me, Toby."

"Yeah, well, show me bruises in the morning. Maybe then we can talk."

Sam looks up at him, and watches as Toby's stare softens. His eyebrows raise and the fingers of his free hand flutter towards him a little, as if to say, not as apology but from care: you okay? Sam nods back, and smiles his best, sure, I'm a pro, remember? smile, and then grins. Toby nods back, then takes in a long breath. He carries on:

"But for now, some work? Please?"

"Okay. Well, since it's already January 5th and there's still about twenty pages of polish to go into the State of the Union, I vote for that."

"Yeah."

"Toby?"

"Yeah, I'm there. What are we looking at?"

"A-16."

"We didn't fix that?"

"Not so much, no."

"Great."

"And the D's a little shaky too. Plus state is all over the foreign policy language - "

"The two sentences of foreign policy language?"

"Those very two. And the Party's been calling me every hour."

Toby rubs the heel of his hand into his right eye, "Yeah?"

"Role of the Federal Government."

"Again?!"

"Apparently so. They're particularly unhappy about the thirty-nine cents they pay annually to the NEA."

"Yes, well. We wouldn't want to be accused of being forward-looking in that area, would we? I'll meet with them. Tell them not to call you anymore."

"Well, that was easy. You want coffee now?"

"That would be nice, yes."

"Shall I phone through or just open the door so you can yell at Ginger?"

Toby looks up at him, his eyes black and unyielding, "Whichever works best for you, Sam."

Sam, smiling, gets up from Toby's couch, stands behind the door and opens it in, throwing his arm across the doorway with a tiny flourish. Toby, sitting behind his desk with a pink rubber ball clenched in his left hand, waits a fraction of a second before he yells, "Ginger!"

Night had fallen before Sam walked into Toby's office, summoned from his own mounds of notes and pads by the unmistakable sound of one of Toby's rubber balls slamming against the window between their two offices. Now the night seems to deepen around them as the Bullpen closes inch by inch and Ginger and Bonnie open Toby's door as quietly as they can and ask, without words, if they can go home. It's Sam that answers them, with a quick nod and a smile; thanks, Bonnie, thanks, Ginger. Toby never looks up, just keeps tapping his fingers against the briefing pads and the panels of his laptop. They move the boxes sitting on the couch eventually, since those are boxes two through five of their notes on Mendoza, and Toby comes to sit beside Sam. They are silent, for the most part, nudging each other to say what about this? when the need arises. Every so often Toby pushes Sam's hands away from his laptop, then runs his fingers over the screen, under whatever sentences have offended him, and shakes his head. Sam sighs, but usually agrees. They'll shout it all out two days before the President locks the speech, tonight isn't the night for that. Sam leans into the warmth of the body beside him as he becomes aware of that the West Wing has started to cool in the January night, and his shoulder rests against Toby's. They are silent as they work, close and warm.

The next evening Sam is summoned again, earlier, just as the dusk has started to darken into night and the sound of commuters fleeing the city has begun in earnest outside the window. Sam lets the ball thump against the window pane three times before he gets up and heads for the next door office, pausing to pick up his laptop and to raise an eyebrow at Toby through the window as he goes to the door. Toby just mouths 'get in here' and turns his back, squeezing the ball in his right hand.

The pink rubber balls, everyone's favourite edition to Toby's office furniture and now the special bane of Sam's life, had arrived one September day as a special delivery from New York. Sam had been sitting in Toby's office, watching the tennis on his TV and trying for the hundredth time to work out the rules of a sport which no-one had explained to him at school or in college and that he has somehow never been able to get hold of. He had been having about as much success as he ever did and was thinking about asking Josh, or even CJ, to coach him a little, when Ginger had come in, bearing a packet addressed to Toby. She held it in both hands away from her body, and looked, to Sam, as if she was sure that it would explode and puree her boss all across the walls of his West Wing office. Sam still isn't sure if she looked anxious or enticed by the prospect.

Toby had taken it from her, shaken it and having been given no clues as to its contents, had waved his hand at Sam to ask for some kind of implement with which to make his attack. Sam had handed him scissors. Toby had then sighed up at the ceiling, as if to say to God and the world at large: you see what I have to live with? Sam had rolled his eyes in reply, then settled back on Toby's couch, feet up on the coffee table to watch the show.

It had been pretty disappointing for both of them (and Ginger too, Sam supposes) when what fell out of the packet and bounced off Toby's desk and amid his papers, on to the floor, had been six rubber balls from out a slim wooded box which Toby had been holding lid-down and open. Sam had muttered, "What the hell?" as one of the balls rolled towards him and disappeared under the coffee table. He had picked it up and squeezed it between his fingers, holding it close to his face.

"It's a ball, Sam. It won't hurt you."

"Toby, who the hell has FedEx-ed you five - "

"Six," Toby says, bending down to retrieve his third ball from under the desk. He's smiling when he reappears, holding the ball in his left hand.

"Six pink rubber balls and a wooden box?"

"My niece. This is her idea of a joke."

"You have a niece?"

"I have two, actually. And a nephew."

"Okay, Toby we're really gonna have to talk about why I know nothing about you!"

"No, we're really not," he had said and picked up a fourth ball from the desk, "Here - catch!"

The ball had, of course, hit Sam square in the mouth.

Now they are a permanent part of Toby's working patterns, and his own too. They live locked in the wooden box and enclosed in Toby's left desk-drawer, only emerging at times of stress. They relieve Toby's stress, to an extent, and aggravate everyone else's. Ginger asked Sam one late afternoon as he passed through the Bullpen if Toby's niece had any particular reason to hate his assistants. Sam had smiled at her, he hopes kindly, and went down to the Mess to get them all coffee and muffins. Toby, when Sam slips in to his office later in the evening, gives him a look.

"Was that ... muffin-giving thing supposed to be a judgement on my character, Sam?"

"Not by me. I think you're heading up the Pain in the Ass award poll in the Bullpen though."

"I'm beating Josh?"

"So it appears."

"Huh."

Sam lays a hand on his arm, "I wouldn't worry, Toby; they understand."

"Indeed."

"And so do I."

"Yes."

"But I'm keeping a stockpile of muffins, just in case."

"You take sucking up to all new levels, Sam."

"What got me where I am today."

2.

Though he isn't sure if 'always' is absolutely the correct word since they've only done this twice now, Sam imagines he will always be sitting next to Toby when the President delivers the State of the Union. If it were Laurie sitting beside him, Sam would be holding her hand: tight, over-warm, squeezing her fingers between his own and letting his breaths match the crescendos of Jed Bartlet's speech, his exhalations seeming too few and far between. He can't hear Toby breathing at all and he is aware of taut stillness in the body beside his, which leans forward on the couch, toward the television. Toby doesn't move, doesn't speak or acknowledge the big sections of the speech, the ones which are, hopefully, spiking the pollsters' dials while they listen; Josh will call when it's done and tell them all about it. For now Sam looks at Toby and sees his lips move with the President's speech, with their words. Sam smiles, and wishes he could cover Toby's hands, hanging clenched together and white-knuckled between his knees, with his own.

When the President stands, finally silent and bowing his head into the sound of wild applause in the House, Toby gets up. Sam watches him walk towards the TV and turn it off, the fingers of his other hand pressed hard into the small of his back, rubbing there. He stands, still, his breathing heavy now; Sam can hear it from the couch.

"Toby?"

He turns round, and Sam thinks his eyes seem almost blank, distant. "Yeah."

Sam grins, "What did you think?

"Huh?"

"The speech, Toby, the President."

"Yeah ... sorry," Toby smiles for a brief moment, and waves the fingers of his left hand next to his face. "I'm still a little ... "

Sam smiles back at him, "You always do this."

"What?"

"This - this inability to function as a normal human being before, during and immediately after the State of the Union. You always do it."

"Always?"

"Yeah."

"That was the second State of the Union, Sam."

"Well, these two times anyway."

"Yeah."

"So what did you think?" Sam asks again, impatient.

Toby nods, and sighs heavily, looking down at his shoes. "That was a foolproof speech we wrote." He looks up at Sam, eyes dark, "Typos, 'flu and the President, notwithstanding."

Sam smiles, and stretches his arms high above his head. "You're not having enough fun with this, Toby."

"No."

"Oh, come on - he did well."

Toby nods, yielding a little. "Yes. Yes he did."

"Good speech, buddy."

Toby stares at him, his head shifting a little over to the left then back to centre as he locks his eyes to Sam's.

"You said it," Sam says, justifying.

"I did."

Sam grins, "Toby!"

He stands, still half way across the room, and a smile finally passes over his face. Sam sighs and gets up and, still smiling, goes over to him and hugs him. He can feel Toby's smile now, hidden in his own shoulder, warm and sure. He holds Toby tight with his arms up around his chest, left hand on his shoulder and Toby hugs him back. Sam is surprised how tight his grip is, where it rests at his waist with the tips of his fingers making a set of small creases in the fabric of Sam's pants. They stand there, for a minute, in each other's arms.

The phone rings, and Sam breaks the embrace, squeezing Toby's arm as he moves away.

"Hey Josh ... yeah it's me."

3.

Toby hates long drives. He didn't know he hated long drives with Sam in particular until tonight, although he already has experience of long walks and so supposes it shouldn't have been too much of a shock. What Toby really loathes right now is Judge Roberto Mendoza's determination to end his existence with as much pain along the way as he can manage. The guy is definitely going to kill him; Toby became sure of that long ago and the only question left is how. He is not at all sure that Judge Mendoza would consider his untimely death the kind of justice which merited his attention, but still he works to get this man confirmed to the bench; this man who has now got himself lost somewhere between Canada and Connecticut.

Sam sits in the driver's seat, listing the exits and turn-offs in a cheery little voice that makes Toby's fingers twitch. Wrapped as he is in his huge overcoat, Sam does not seem to feel the cold but Toby lost the feeling in his toes two exits back and it isn't doing anything for his temper.

"Hey, at least we've got a car this time," Sam says, slipping a glance over to him.

Toby raises an eyebrow, "Shut up."

"Toby. We'll find him, and this damn police station - "

"In that order?"

Sam gives him a look, then flicks his eyes back to the road. "We'll find Mendoza, you'll roast the guys who busted him and I'll get us back home in time for supper. It'll be okay."

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut _up_!"

"In time for supper, Toby."

Toby sighs, loudly, then slams the back of his head against the seat twice, just to make the point clear. Then it's Sam's turn to raise his eyebrows, so Toby raises his right back, prompting Sam to roll his eyes, which has Toby groaning and rubbing two fingers deep into his left eye.

"Find the fucking exit, Sam."

"I will. I'm zeroing in on it." Sam says, his voice still inexplicably cheerful by Toby's side.

Toby sighs and leans his head back against the seat, closes his eyes. And, in between pointless comments from his deputy and the odd poke to his negligible map-reading ability, Toby drifts.

It's Sam who comes into his thoughts. He's singing a little tune that Toby cannot place low under his breath and the song has twisted itself into Toby's half-dreams, following into the sleep he can't quite get full hold of. He shifts in the seat, trying without much success to get comfortable and burying his chin into the up-turned collar of his coat. Sam's knuckles brush against his thigh as he changes gear and Toby grunts at the touch, giving nothing away in tone or volume; he's not sure Sam even notices, and that is just fine. Toby shifts again, turning his head to the window, trying to catch sleep. He tries not to remember the pressure of Sam's hand on his right shoulder or the warmth of Sam's chest pressed hard to his own, but they are the things which lull him, slowly and bound with the sound of Sam's voice singing in an undertone, into a shallow sleep.

He wakes a few moments before Josh rings and bites down on the dreams and on (most) of the bile that threatens the calm progress of the conversation and as Josh hangs up, his eyes catch the words _Wesley Police Station_ and he offers up a silent prayer, from which he doesn't bother to excise the sarcasm.

"Hey!" Sam says, looking at him in one moment, his face full of light. Toby feels his chest constrict, but pushes the implications of his reactions out the way.

"Yeah," he says, keeping his voice low and level.

"Look!"

"Yeah."

"We found it!" Sam says, his hand hitting Toby's leg gently, his voice full of satisfaction.

Toby wonders if Sam had a series of frustrated experiences as a Boy Scout in his youth, then says, "Let's get this done and get outta here."

4.

There has never been, Toby thinks, amazed that he can still manage coherent sentences at this late hour, a better time for drinking than this, their day of jubilee. They got through all the champagne in the West Wing during the first round, and although it was very fine, Toby can't get drunk on champagne, no matter how many bottles are available, and so he and Sam have come down to the kitchens for a second round, bringing with them as much hard spirits as they could find. It's late, and all the staff are gone. The fluorescent lights are washing Sam's skin out, rendering him sallow, his eyes and hair both dull black. He is heading for his second bottle now and is still going strong; Toby is on his fourth glass and has only just passed the point where getting Sam this drunk has stopped worrying him. They sit side by side at the long steel table, arms flat out on the table top, their thighs just touching, beneath its surface.

"I think Mallory hates me again," Sam says, out of nowhere, into his Jack Daniels.

"Hmmm?"

"Leo's daughter; I think we're in an off-again phase now ... again."

"I did actually mention at the time that the whole thing is stupid, Sam."

"Yeah," Sam says, quiet.

"Yeah," Toby says, louder.

"I mean, she was great at lunch and all ... but she did call me a fascist."

Toby sighs, and looks up at him. "I'm sure, you know, she was just, doing that thing that women do."

"Cruelty?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

Toby watches Sam stare into his drink for a moment, then tip the last third of a glass down his throat.

"Sam, she doesn't hate you. She knows about opposition papers. Leo told me that you did your blue-eyed boy act. It's all fine."

"No, I'm not sure that it is fine, Toby."

"Well, I'm not sure that the whole thing isn't extremely ill-advised anyway. You really want Leo as a father-in-law?"

"Sure, why not?"

Toby stares at him, "Leo?"

"Yeah."

"Your father-in-law?"

"_Yeah._"

"Okay, fine. That's just gonna be some interesting dinner-table conversation is all I'm saying."

"So being married to Mallory would be an experience more full of terror than working for the President of the United States? And you."

"Why don't you ask Charlie what he thinks about that?"

"I just might, Toby!"

"Do then!"

"Why are we arguing about this?"

"I don't know! You started the whole stupid thing!"

"It's not going to work out with Mallory."

"No," Toby says, looking over to Sam.

"Oh well. Back on the horse, I guess."

"I'm not even gonna touch that."

"So: Lisa, Laurie, Mallory. Not the best luck these last few years, huh?" Sam says, smiling with sadness in his eyes.

"I guess not."

"Must be the curse of the West Wing."

"In that case, I'm sure it's not just you who it got."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"We serve at the pleasure of the President, and that's all the pleasure we got," Toby says, dimly aware, in the last cogent corner of his mind as he downs the last of his fourth glass, that he is now comfortably sloshed.

Sam laughs, a little, then falls silent. Toby watches him pick his empty glass up and bring it back down, softly, on the table-top once, twice. Sam takes in a deep breath then says,

"Toby, do you remember ... "

"What?" he asks, after a fair pause.

"Nothing."

"What, Sam?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

"Sam ... "

He answers, in a voice so soft, "South Carolina?"

"Well," Toby says, after another substantial pause, "That really takes the edge off."

"Forget it, Toby; doesn't matter."

"I do," he says, his voice low.

Sam's head raises, sharp - too sharp for someone who's drunk that much Jack. "What?"

"South Carolina."

"Oh."

"Toby ... "

"Don't."

"No - I'm not gonna ... you know."

"Good."

"Okay," he says. Toby curls away from the sounds of sadness in Sam's voice, pours a little more whisky into his own glass, and then into Sam's.

"We can't, Sam ... not now."

"Yeah, right."

"Sam ..." he says and almost flinches from the quick shift of the young man's face round to his own, from the pale despair in his eyes. "Jesus, Sam."

"Sorry."

"Don't say that," Toby says, surprised, a little, by the hard sound of his own voice. "Don't be sorry."

"I'm not sorry ... about _that_. Just about ... you, about this."

"Either one, Sam."

"Okay."

Toby reaches out for him, finds his hand on the steel surface. Sam curls his fingers around Toby's hard and quick, gripping fast to Toby's hand and bringing his other arm round to Toby's shoulder. It is more wrestle than embrace when they come together, clumsy, still a little drunken; teeth and tongue, and Toby muffles the sound of his pain and the passing taste of his own blood by slipping his face into Sam's neck. He lets Sam put both his hands to his face and raise his head, then tilt it back, baring the neck. Sam kisses him at the base of his throat, pressing his mouth hard against the soft skin and the hard hammer of Toby's pulse; then up, into his beard, under his jaw, and around to his mouth. Sam whispers, "Toby ... " against his lips before he stops up the sound.

Soft, slow, then gone. When Sam shifts away Toby leans his head in again, staring at Sam's mouth, but Sam shakes his head.

"Not now," he says. "You were right the first time."


End file.
